Designer Pro + / UI colour scheme and shortcut key reference

[handrawn]

interesting... but these suggestions are surely for OS oriented apps that integrate into windows...

if you wanted to follow a standard in a graphic app it would be adobe [apple not MS] would it not?

and when the coloured icons for tools that are still present in ver 19 first appeared in xara they were decried as 'toytown'

never going to please everyone....

and I am still not into self harm, though I will admit to a fondness of hyperbole

[berklee]

interesting... but these suggestions are surely for OS oriented apps that integrate into windows...

if you wanted to follow a standard in a graphic app it would be adobe [apple not MS] would it not?

The document itself is a guide for Windows, yes. But really the point of it is to create a relatively familiar interface for most users when using their application. Whether MS chooses to observe the ideas of others or vice versa, there's enough similarity between OSes that most 'normal' app behaviours are at least similar across all platforms. (Unless you wanna talk Microsoft Bob or one of those gawd-awful exceptions. lol) The point is, it's a long-established set of guidelines because these types of application behaviours are what the user anticipates. Fair point about Adobe though... although I don't know if I would expect Xara's users to be people coming from a much more expensive offering... it would likely be the opposite I would think.

I'm clearly an outlier here, and yeah - you can't please everyone... but I'm a firm believer in at least stating the impression I got so that it's known. They can ignore it if they so choose of course, but they won't have the chance to consider it if they don't know it exists.

[handrawn]

standardisation is useful, but functionality beats it every time for me

what I would not like is all apps to be exactly the same in all respects, because then choice goes out the window...

[Boy]

standardisation is useful, but functionality beats it every time for me

what I would not like is all apps to be exactly the same in all respects, because then choice goes out the window...

I agree. In addition, some variation among the apps' UIs helps in remembering where the different tools, panels etc. are located and how each app actually works.

If I compare the UIs of XDP 19 with the Affinity apps, the different layouts and looks visualize in one fell swoop their unique workflow. However, it requires fairly frequent use of each of the apps or else I have to reacquaint myself with their underlying logic again.

[handrawn]

take the function PAN

I can think of at least three ways to do this:

hold down spacebar and move mouse
hold down middle mouse button and move mouse
hold down right mouse button and move mouse

they all have their pros and cons depending what you are doing and what the program might do instead, eg context menu in xara for the third example which you may prefer; software companies look at their packages holistically in terms of functioality [well the good ones do anyway]

and that is the crux - some of the time it's best one way and some of the time another way; it's not practical to have it all ways...

there are aspects of xara's UI that 'get in my way' frequently, but I understand why they are there - double click to switch tool, and the ability to add an object to a layer that is locked [!] to name but two